Epilogue

Abstract

This epilogue explores agrotopian legacies in twentieth- and twenty-first-century discourses of population control, wilderness preservation, and neo-agrarianism. First, it examines Nancy Newhall’s and Ansel Adams’s This Is the American Earth (1960), a coffee-table book published by the Sierra Club, which adapts nineteenth-century agrotopian narratives to twentieth-century preservationism and neo-Malthusianism. Next, it turns to Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden, as depicted in American Grown (2012). While This Is the American Earth exemplifies overpopulation anxieties, American Grown focuses on revitalizing agrarian ideals, appreciating Jeffersonian wisdom, and encouraging Americans to reconnect with the soil. Separated by over half a century, these texts exemplify the far-reaching influence of agrotopian thinking in modern US environmentalism and sustainability rhetoric.